Last week was one of those weeks in which one wonders “Am I truly going to make it?  Is my family truly going to make it?”  A series of discouraging events culminating in my son being asked to buy drugs by one of his friends, threw my mind into sinking sand.  Rather, I allowed it all to throw my mind into sinking sand.

A heart-wrenching letter from my ex-husband in prison, a longing and a request for the restoration of friendship denied, sleepless nights, sick kids, and a drug pushing “friend” for my son.  I skipped church.  I sank lower.  And the lower I sank, the more I could not find firm ground to stand upon.

Until today.

It’s funny, how something as small as scripture–or as big as scripture–can have such an impact on a person’s life.  It’s because, as I’ve written just recently, scripture is alive.  A two-edged sword…piercing our souls.  And that is exactly what happened.  In the strangest way.

My 14 (yes, I said 14) year old daughter brought home a picture she had colored while at AWANA and she hung it up on our refrigerator.  From a coloring book.  We kind of laughed together last night when she brought it home, because she hasn’t “colored” in years.  But, I guess, you are never too young to color. (unless you are like me who never liked to color.)

This morning I was aggravatedly (yes, that is not a word) throwing out old leftovers from the fridge during a break in work.  As I did so, I looked closer at her picture.  On it was a scripture verse:  1 Corinthians 15:58:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Of course.  There was that word again, “steadfast”.  A word that has been important to me since being shown 1 Thessalonians 3:8-10:

8 For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. 9 For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, 10 as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith?

For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord.  Therefore my beloved brothers, be steadfast.  And over and over again in the Psalms we are told of God’s steadfast love for us.  Some form of “standing fast” is prevalent all throughout scripture.

But the word that caught my eye today was “immovable”.  Not only am I called to be steadfast, I am called to be “immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord”.  What on earth does that mean?

Stay with me here, this is where it gets tricky.

For me, and for some of you, to stand fast and to be immovable really means to keep moving.  To not stagnate out.  To not become so mired in the quick sand of life and introversion that it inhibits one from moving forward, from doing the work that God has called us to do.  I know I can become so discouraged and despairing that I don’t see the needs that I can meet right in front of my face.  And that is sin.

And so for me, to be steadfast means to keep pushing forward.  To seek out what God would have me to do.  To give my all to parenting, to my job, to my church, but most of all to my Jesus and what He would have me to do.

To be steadfast means that I’ve got to keep moving.

So I slowly drug myself out of the mud and into the study of scripture.  And worship.  And thanksgiving.

And that’s what we’ve done as a family tonight.  We fixed dinner together.  We went out and bought our gift for the church’s Angel Tree.  We put up the Christmas tree.   And now we are getting ready to play a game together.

So, I encourage you–be steadfast and immovable, but continue to move forward.  Be steadfast and immovable in your faith, in scripture, in your love for God and your family.  And keep moving forward “abounding in the work of the Lord.”  Your labor, though discouraging at times, is never in vain.

This is probably one of “those” posts that won’t remain up long.  But writing is my solace, so I turn to this forum to clear my soul and my mind.

I was a bit blindsided this afternoon.  I was wasting time on Facebook, and looked to the right to find a timeline.  I honestly had never messed with the timeline before, but today I was intrigued.  My timeline went back to 2008.

2008 was a lifetime ago.  Actually, it was a completely different life.  One I can barely imagine now.  But as I scrolled back through…all the way to 2008, I find myself lost in a whirlwind of wonderful and beautiful and overwhelming memories.  There were vacation pictures of our vacation to Duck.  There were pictures with the youth from Seaford Baptist Church.  There were pictures of fun times with family and friends.  And there were beautiful pictures of our wedding vow renewal.  Some pictures I deleted.  Others I couldn’t bear to let go of…..like the picture of all of us crammed into our small living room to watch Hawaii play in a bowl game.  And a picture of all of us right after our vow renewal.  These I could not let go of.

Soon after Jack’s arrest, I purged our pictures.  Not out of anger or sadness or anything other than thinking it was the best thing for the children at the time.  Now I’m not so sure.  Did I rob them of memories?  Should I have let them make those decisions?  Will they some day wish that they had a picture from our wedding?  Will I?  Things like this haunt me.

So.  Late this afternoon I found myself wrecked to the point of tears.  Uncharacteristic tears.  It’s been a long–a very long–time since I have found myself this wrecked to the point of an ugly cry.  It wasn’t just missing my ex-husband, it wasn’t just missing what could have been and what never will be.  It was also seeing my crew as young children—and knowing how much I missed out on their lives due to cynicism and my own selfishness.  And sin.  Seeing their smiles, how sweet they were, how much I wish I had loved them well as children–that I had hugged them more; told them I loved them more often; given them more of myself.

I was wrecked.  I’m still somewhat wrecked.  I locked myself in my room and set the alarm for 10 minutes, letting the tears flow for 10 minutes.  When my iPhone alarm went off, that was the end of that.  I pulled the sobs to an end, washed my face and moved on with the busy evening’s activities of music and play practices.

What does one do with this?  My heart physically hurts tonight.  So much loss.  So much loss for my crew.  Oh, we are well–we are very well, by the grace of God.  But sometimes the ache is very tangible; tonight it is so.  What does one do with this.  Why did God create us to feel so deeply the memories–both beautiful and horrific–of our lives?  And what do I do about tonight?  How do I settle this enough to sleep?

I do the only thing I know how to do.  I first write.  And then I lay it at my Savior’s feet and beg–beg Him for peace and grace and mercy and solace.  I remember with thanksgiving the beautiful times we have had.  The beautiful times we have now as a crew.  The beautiful times we will have in the future.  But the hard things?

Those I will try to lay at the feet of my Savior tonight.

I had the privilege of spending a day this weekend with a long-time friend.  We met at the Outer Banks for a night to catch-up on each other’s lives.  She’s involved in an orphan advocacy ministry called 127 Worldwide, Inc.  It was so great to spend the time with her, hearing what God is doing and sharing with each other.

What is a friend?  What does friendship look like?

I think each of us could come up with a list of characteristics that we value in our friendships:  trust, like-mindedness, a willingness to “be there”, a spiritual condition–the list could be very long and contain a variety of attributes.

But as I was driving back home from being with my friend, I thought about Jesus and friendship.  Jesus and His friends.  Particularly Peter.

In John 15:15, Jesus says “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

I find this verse to be tremendous.  Jesus considered those around Him to be His friends.  Friends!  Can you imagine what it must be like to be the friend of the Son of God?  And yet that is also what He considers you and I to be, if we are believers and followers of Christ.  We are friends of God!

When I consider that, it humbles me, because I am not a very good friend to Jesus.  There are times that I have neglected Him, abandoned Him, mocked Him.  I have sinned against Him.  There is no reason why God should call me a friend.

And there have been times that I’ve not been a very good friend to my earthly friends.  There are times I have neglected them.  Abandoned them.  Forgotten them.  And this breaks my heart, because I want so badly to be a good friend.

In John 15:13, Jesus says “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”  This is what my Jesus has done for me…..He has laid down his life for me, for the forgiveness of my sins.  Yet have I laid down my life for Him?  I would like to think that I have, but upon close examination, I really have not.  The selfishness that consumes me keeps me from saying “God, here is my life.  Do with it as you would please.  I lay it down for you.”  Oh, I want to be able to say those words, and I have said them before.  But do I really mean them?  Do you really mean them?  What would such a friendship look like?

We often think that a friend would be one who would never abandon or betray us.  But take a look at the disciples.  At the moment of Jesus’ most need for His friends, they could not even stay awake one hour to pray or to watch while Jesus prayed.  And then Peter.  Poor Peter–who declared he would never betray his friend Jesus, denied him three times at the height of Christ’s crises.

But Peter went on to become the founder of the first century church.  The disciples who could not stay awake became strong pillars in the growing faith after Christ’s resurrection.

What about Judas, who betrayed Jesus?  Who wasn’t a follower of Christ?  We read this passage in Matthew 26:47-50:

While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him. Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.” Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him.

Every time I read this passage, it stabs me in the soul.  Jesus said to Judas, whom He knew was approaching Him to betray Him, “Friend, do what you came to do.”  Oh, how those words must have pierced Judas through and through.  Friend.  Jesus’ friend.  Judas.  And thus scripture was fulfilled, because Psalm 41:9 said “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.”

So what is a friend?  I think the answer is far more complicated than the surface treatment that we give the term friendship today.  What we do know is that friendship is created by God, for us.  What we do know is that Jesus valued friendship.  What we do know is that a friend should be willing to lay down His life for another friend.  What we do know is that friendship can be difficult.

I value my friendships deeply.  I have had friends that have made tremendous sacrifices for me and my crew.  I have had friends that have turned their backs on me and abandoned me.  I have had friends that have grown steadily over many years, and friends that have been “instant friendship” upon meeting.  I am grateful in each of these situations, for my friends.  I am sad when I take my friendships for granted; when I don’t take the time to nurture them and pursue them, because of excuses such as lack of time or energy.  I must make more effort in being a better friend.

And I must make more effort to be a better friend to my Jesus.  I say that cautiously, because I would never, ever assume equality in our relationship—He is the almighty God, I am His child.  But my relationship with Him needs nurturing, too, without the excuses of lack of time or energy.  Or anger and frustration.  Or the lack of sensing His presence.  I must spend time with Him daily to see our relationship grow and evolve over the years ahead.

My friends, what about you?  What steps do you need to take in order to nurture your current friendships?  And what do you need to do to help develop your relationship–your friendship–with the God of the universe?

O God, we do friendship so imperfectly.  And yet, you still call us friend.  You called Judas friend; that I can not understand.  But what I can do is to continually seek your face through prayer and study of your scriptures.  I thank you for my friends.  For those close and those scattered around the world.  Help me to continue to learn what it means to be a friend.  Don’t let me let selfishness and other excuses stand in the way of nurturing these God-given and God-ordained gifts of friendship.  And may we as churches seek to strengthen our friendships within while also seeking out new friends that so desperately need the hope that only you can give.